Imagine a first strike on a handful of locations that remove more that half our remaining carrier fleet that are either in port or drydock/under construction. Without repair facilties or construction capacity, how is that fight west of Wake going to go?
500 vessels sunk sounds high, but I don't dispute it. It's a lot higher than I would have guessed. I know there were 52 subs lost. The article is behind a paywall - so I don't know if it gives a breakdown.
Looks like 174 surface combatants and submarines (they list 54, not 52 subs).
I suspect the balance of that 500 is auxiliary ships. But the point remains we can't replace that in 4 years at current capacity even if the auxiliary ships are excluded.
The 4 fleet and 7 light/escort carriers are beyond what we do now. 4 fleet carriers is over a decade of work and mapping the 7 light and escort carriers to modern amphib helicopter carriers is at least a decade.
Thanks. Another issue is combat damage. In WWII ships could take a beating and still fight - that not the case now. Hits from small arms can likely cause a "mission kill" these days.
I'm afraid we're going to have to get hurt hard in order to do what's necessary. No real will to say, add another Virginia or Burke line, or even look at relatively cheap firepower additions (OSV or FRC with missile packs). Repair facilities.... just exist, right? The contractors can crank out unlimited ammunition, right? People have a belief that it's still 1991, no matter how much they deny it.
I consider it a case of ramping up hull numbers now for (hopefully) deterrent effect. Get a couple squadrons of missile boats in the Philippines, a few more in Vietnam, more at various islands so we can have the big ships closer to the main battle area.
Our unused fleet in being are offshore OSVs and FSVs. We should have an emergency plan to enlist them. We need more gear that can be quickly attached to a hull of convenience.
Patrol ships? Do you mean combatants as opposed to cargo ships?
I would think we had more combatant vessels under construction at first, until we gained naval superiority over the Japanese. At that point we could shift more construction towards the merchant vessels transporting fuel, beans, bullets, and bandages. By then the Japanese weren't as much of a threat to our shipping, which allowed us to get busy moving more troops and materiel from island to island.
Victory in the Pacific required boots on the ground and shadows on the runways, and to get to that point we had to defang the IJN first.
I'm all for building more hulls to patrol where needed and to hit back at whatever threats are there. I just hope the little guys have appropriate weaponry for 2024.
We survived WW2 in the Pacific because ship technology was so much simpler and because the nation began gearing up for it two years earlier by building armaments for the British. Boiler controls? That was Fireman Snuffy. Target tracking for all of the auxiliaries was the Mk 1 Eyeball. Our nation has become incredibly sidetracked by the new religion of anthropomorphic warming (yet 50 years ago the big scare headlines warned of a new ice age). And frankly, with so many people expecting things to be done for them by the government, I feel most of the nation has lost the will do to anything except lay back and whine in the face of adversity. I really wish I could be more positive, but my only hope is my children and grandchildren, who are running counterflow to the stream.
Many problems are not as bad when you do a deep dive into them. Things you think you knew aren't accurate, you learn things that mitigate your fears, etc.
As the CDR Sal lays out, (very accurately, in my opinion)...Naval war in the Pacific is not one of them. The more I learned about the short, mid and long term prospects for, and impacts of such a conflict, and what is required to mitigate those issues, the worse it appeared.
If you use a DIME / PMESII construct to describe the environment and the interactions of the players in such a framework, it gets bad very quickly. We're not ready for this, don't seem to understand the task, and are taking few if any actions to mitigate the known weaknesses. Which brings the use of "weapons of mass destruction" much closer to reality than ever before. Never forget, you go to war with what you have, not what's projected in the POM, in the pipeline, or on the latest .ppt brief for a "game changing C4ISR / targeting / kill chain shortening system". When you're losing, you'll reach for what you've got in you hand...that goes for both side in any conflict.
Well we’re going to war with a CNO that I spent most of two years with in college (was our coxswain). She’s smart, but not by any measure within a 16” shot of a King or Nimitz. And I suspect fully woke-ified.
^ For the thousand acres of solar panels planned for there? The plunge will be epic and inspiring. I want Ltjg Kerry recalled to active duty with a sail board to command to defend Attu.
Even at the height of the Cold War there was an assumption that a certain percentage of submarines would be lost in the first week of the war not to direct enemy action but to ship handling errors by the crew under combat conditions. I assume a similar, but lower due to the less extreme environment, number for surface ships. Certainly, damage control failures would cost ships there (as they did for Japan the entirety of WW2).
After a change of command I had a new CO tell us we were just the kind of boat in question. This didn't surprise me based on the prior CO's priorities: politics. He was promoted to a more prestigious command for that politicking and who cares if we didn't survive day one of a war after he left.
Yet, compared to the modern Navy that CO was a piker at putting politics ahead of readiness. It's no surprise as this was the mid-90s and 30 more years of peace have accrued. The Army and Marines have had some breaks in peace to let mud boots rise some. The Navy has had nothing (I suspect the Air Force hasn't either).
With fewer ships than we lost in WW2 we cannot afford the kind of week one loses we are facing from ship handling and damage control failures.
Fresh aboard DE-1027 in 1966, this RDSA was sent to USS Buttercup in Newport, RI with a cadre of similarly clueless sailors. One day of training with a "sink or swim" final exam. My memory is still "Wow", "OMG" and "...please, Jesus". Except for the daily inport fire drills I (we) never again did such intense damage control training in the next six ships in 19½ years of sea duty over my 26 year career. Was I ready in the Gulf of Tonkin? The Persian Gulf? I don't think so. How many USS Buttercups have we now? Are they running a night shift and on weekends? "Please, Jesus."
That is *EXACTLY* what was in my mind when I wrote that remark up there. Going up the ladder INTO a raging tube of cold water thundering down through a scuttle on top of my head was just about the most unnatural thing I ever forced myself to do.
The jibbering caveman in my brainstem was screaming "no no no" and he almost prevailed. The greater fear of disappointing my shipmates and embarrassing myself in front of them won out. Barely.
Yep. Fear of letting down others is one hell of a motivator. The submarine wet trainers have a flange that’s set to give the watchstander a good blast of water in the face as he’s making a report.
I was the single officer (Ensign with a whopping 3 months of active service) in my DC class. Pressure to do well personally as well as leading a DC team that without doubt had more experience than I do? Oh, yeah.
We had a chance to do what I assume was an easy run on Buttercup when I was in Sea Cadets. It was a lot of fun (summer). Engaged in more vigorous training at Treasure Island, Repair Party Leader school or whatever it was called, a few years later
It might be worth pointing out that "500 ships lost" doesn't include ships taken out of the fight for long periods of time due to damage sustained in action.
Indeed. Many of the ships damaged at, say Pearl Harbor, were repaired at Mare Island, now long-closed and most of the real estate transformed into a Lennar Housing development.
The US doesn't have the Yards, public or private that can be expanded to support new build, repairs, or refits of major combatants.
Outside of the National Security Cutter, the US doesn't have the established "viable" small combatant designs that can be readily produced. The Navy should be out licensing construction of FFG-62 to every yard that has the real estate.
What's left in reserve, the old CG-47's, need new Combat Systems, and even if upgraded, we don't have the missiles to fill their VLS.
In short, it's going to be a SOB to keep them West of the First Island Chain when they decide to come out and Play.
We have OPCs coming on line in 2 yards. I'd also say tha if FMM can't manage 2 FFG per year effectively, could they manage 1 FFG and 1 MMSC because I am starting to he the MMSC actually fixes more of the LCS problems than has been publicized. I'd also say that after EPF Flt II and the EMS ships, get that line working on a new aluminum surface combatant that addresses some of the shortcomings of the Indy design.
FMM has already announced that the USS Constellation will be at least one year late, and over budget. The "stated" problem is lack of labor, esp. welders. BS. The problem is that Navy has made many changes to the design of the FREMM and each change increases cost and pushes out delivery date since multiple Navy agencies have to review in detail what the change affect. What a Goat Rope. Name the Navy person requesting the change and reduce them by at least one rank, or be fired.
If the First Island Chain is not doable, then shoot for the Third (French Frigate Shoals) or Fourth (The Farallons & Channel Islands). Let the Admirals call it the foundation for Defense in Depth.
When I wrote this morning in answer to Brettbaker, I was angry. Angry because of the political environment that has corrupted our national defense in general, and the Navy in particular simply because that is how I spent my military time. I will try to be more constructive, though I make no promises. My time in NAVSEA Preliminary Ship Design included doing something my superiors told me was impossible - adding a dual helo hangar to DDG-51. So, here we go. The Constellation class will not, on its own, fill the gap. The line is too slow and geographically challenged, in addition to the programmatic fubars you mentioned. The NSC has twice the displacement of the Fletcher class. I suggest that a considerable portion of the extra displacement in our current ship classes is due to carrying around as much habitability space as we do. I commissioned USS John Young (DD-973) and I was frankly embarrassed by the bowling alley hab spaces we enjoyed.
I didn't join the Navy for a pleasure cruise. I joined to to serve and fight as needed. Who among you has ever seen a recruiting ad for the Corps that featured the soft beds in the barracks?
Getting off my soap box and back to ship design. Every ton we intentionally add to a ship design is joined unintentionally by six others due to the iterative nature of designing ships. If we strip out the fripperies, and stop trying to add every new toy and weapon system possible to a given ship, we can get down to a displacement and operational speed profile that more closely matches the DDs or even the DEs of WW2. As an on-scene participant, I can tell you that the DDG-1000 design team had to juggle and shoehorn 23 new technologies into that hull. Why should anyone be surprised it ended up so large? We powered some of those WW2 DEs with diesel engines. Why does everything need a gas turbine these days? General Electric is still in the business of building diesel-electric plants for locomotives. Some of the same assembly lines might be useful as is; some may need to be converted to similar, but different, designs. I mention hab space and propulsion options, and I may not have hit on the right list of topics to examine, but I am convinced these and other issues need to be more closely examined by someone willing to throw rocks at all of the glass houses in DC. We will never make progress if we continue to go down the same road program after program.
Concur. I can see a lot of need for small frigates in our future. We’ve spent a lot of national treasure on the Burke class - well spent, but a billion here and a billion there and soon it adds up to real money. We need to think a bit harder than was done to birth to the LCS.
I hadn’t looked at the characteristics of that class until now. Thanks. There always seems to be a psychological need to hit 30+ kt that can’t always be matched by an operational need to climb the cubic power curve. Gas turbines are efficient only at the upper end of their power curve, so a CODAG plant carries around dead weight most of the time.
As an aside, and pardon if I’ve asked this question before, but you the same Andy I worked with on the DDG 1000 preliminary design?
"Don’t just look at the personnel numbers. 500 U.S. naval vessels sunk. I have news for you, we have no way in 2024 to replace even a fraction of those numbers in under four years. We will have to fight with what we have, and try to force victory in the face of attrition without relief."
Sir, where will we find the crews to man the replacements?
For most Americans (especially politicians), oceans are mysteries. Crossing the Atlantic to Euroland is but a five-hour night flight, mostly asleep after meal service. The Western Pacific is also a similar and abstract travel concept; the burden of intercontinental movement deadened by inflight video entertainment. Meanwhile, even at home within the US itself, most destinations are a three or four-hour flight from here to there, unless one must connect in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, etc.
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The point being... Our ability to move fast and far does not necessarily make us wiser; definitely not operationally or strategically wiser. In the olden days, there was something to be said for riding a train or sailing on a ship and watching the world pass by at close quarters. Much slower, yes. But the journey came with a far better appreciation for the actual geography beneath, aka the tyranny of distance.
I know most people find logistics boring, but ... has anybody tallied up how many American shipyards can build/repair each class of combatant vessel, tanker, and cargo ship that we currently use?
If we're standing here with our pants around our ankles, as I suspect we are, then how many shipyards/drydocks do we need to add in order to build and sustain a victorious fleet? How are we doing on fuel dumps and refineries?
Would dumping the Jones Act goose our merchant shipping fleet? What other laws need to be repealed (yes, yes, Goldwater-Nichols goes without saying) or enacted to fix our self-inflicted mess?
How are we looking for steel, rare earth elements, and critical microchips?
Are we ever going to put serious guns on our ships again? I suspect the Marines would appreciate having something heftier than 5" on call for naval gunfire support.
Is there a modern Andrew Higgins or three out there who needs to be funded and turned loose?
What a freakin' mess. We used to be a seagoing nation.
As much as I hate the politics of Oregon/Washington and the Portland/Vancouver metro area...theres a ton of potential here. The Vancouver Kaiser yards are gone, but at least the area is still mostly industrial, and the waterfront isn't condos and apartments. But that's slowly changing. On part of that same land, Vigor is building new landing craft for the Army. So if there was an urgency, a second round of shipbuilding and/or repair is possible in Vancouver.
In Portland, the Swan Island yards can handle rather large ships, in fact I believe one of the hospital ships was or is there getting some work done. There's a couple drydocks there capable of handling DDGs. I dont think theres room for a lot of expansion, but theres certainly a useful amount of repair capacity there, certainly enough to help take the strain off of SD and Bremerton if utilized properly.
I know there are decent shipyards in the Great Lakes, but they can't build anything for the Navy that's too big to squeeze out of the St Lawrence Seaway. They do build plenty of Coast Guard cutters.
The SLS maximums are:
Length: 225.5 m (740 ft.)
Beam: 23.77 m (78 ft.)
Draft: 8.08 m (26 ft., 6 in.)
Height above waterline: 35.5 m (116.5 ft.)
If the freshwater yards up here can be put to work building the smaller vessels, I wonder if our remaining coastal yards can crank out enough capital ships and repair the damaged ones?
I wonder what yards we've got on the Mississippi River?
Im still on my first coffee so too lazy to look it up right now...but those dimensions sound like theyd accommodate a Burke- with the height/draft being the assumed potential issues. How hard would it be to fix those issues if truly needed?? How many miles of seaway would need dredged?? How many bridges need replaced?? Just wondering. And...how practical would a big builder be up there considering the weather/waterway icing?? Is it a serious problem for building/scheduling?? We dont get that cold here in the PNW thank God!!
Ice in the Great Lakes that's up to 3 feet thick can be dealt with by the assorted USCG icebreaking tugs (140' Bay class), and ice up to 10 feet thick can be broken by the MACKINAW.
I wondered if that was a factor in deleting the bow sonar from the Connies- the inability to gift the contract to someone who had a geographical inability to actually build the ship...
Ok... yeah that's likely an insurmountable problem. I looked at nav charts here around Portland/Vancouver. I know DDGs can get to Portland because they come to the Vigor Swan Island yard and downtown for fleet week. The channel adjacent to the old Vancouver Kaiser location is close. The location could become a build/repair yard again with just deepening the shoreline to allow it. Considering that WestPac is the likely next conflict, more west coast capacity would be really nice. The caveat being if damaged ships were sent to Vancouver vs Portland, and had additional draft, the channel might need rework to accommodate it. Nice to daydream, anyway.
"Are we ever going to put serious guns on our ships again?"
This.... Im an unabashed fan of digging the old MCLWG and its blueprints outta museum duty and getting it into production. An 8in gun really is in the sweet spot of balance between mount weight/bulk and shell weight. In my daydreams, I see a return to twin mounts, and significantly deeper magazines than the 1970s prototype.
I think a WestPac conflict is going to see a lot of empty VLS, and a lot of ships stumbling around in EMCON, and bumbling into the enemy like the Guadalcanal days. And marking the W or L column will come down to a gun duel. I really think we need to be better prepared for that. Building the Spruances to accept the 8in gun was a bright move, but weve lost our way since then...
In another convo, another time, it was guesstimated that 8in rounds would land between 1 and $2k each. Not free but certainly absurdly cheap compared to anything else!!
Shows Propellant is $120 and $604 for the fancy new multi-function fuze or $93 for a basic PD fuze. It's $13,303.55 if you want to put a guidance kit on the round.
So, all up, $900 per 155mm with fuze PD, $1,400 for a VT/PD/Delay/time fuze, or about $14K for a 155mm guided round. That 14K isn't nearly as bad as I expected.
The Atlanta class crusier. The first four units were equipped 16, 5"-38 caliber guns. Maybe a modernized version of this concept would be helpful. The rambling thoughts of an old hermit.
With infinite chances those guns won't hi a target 900nm away. The real question is what can a gun really do to a supersonic cruise missile, a hypersonic cruise missile, and a drone swarm.
We also need to make use of the Marines. Every island of the coast of Yemen should be occupied. Every coastal vilage west of Aden should be razed. The Marines could then move inward from the coast. We have 100,000+ Marines. Surely, they are all not guarding embassies.
I appreciate the sentiment...but Im not really a fan of putting men ashore anywhere in that region. Id rather wreak havoc by air...bring in the -52s and level everything. The Houthis need to be eliminated as a threat to shipping. BUT I think until we deal with Iran, these Middle East brushfires will keeping popping up until we do. THATS what we need to be looking at and planning now. Otherwise, Insure Prosperity or whatever its called, will be a multi-year debacle, and our Israeli friends will see Hamas rise again...
Neither am I, but there is a limit to what can be accomplished from the air and sea. In the end only the Marines can clear out the ratholes, basements, and caves.
Maybe.... Of course, we need to conduct ops like we're doing it to win. Which means WWII style. No wimpy ROEs or an anal retentive level of collateral damage avoidance.
Kill...destroy...and come home. And frankly Id suggest the same kinda treatment for Iran. Decapitate the govt, eliminate all military capability, as well as military manufacturing. (And oh yeah...all those nuclear processing sites!!) Then come home. No troops needed
Agreed. No more pauses in the air campaign in the hope that the other side will see these as gestures of goodwill and come to the negotiating table. Reduce the enemy to rubble until he crawls and asks for terms.
Islands maybe, the mainland, big, dry and they don't like us much. Nothing is gained by occupying a place. Just work to exert full influence. If anyone can wake up dead in he middle of the night they will start changing their routine.
Get back into? We have been there far too long for most of our liking. Shackled to a corpse that we find difficult to divest from. That's the reality. What we are discussing are threats to the sea lane and today's ultimate source of ME instability, Iran. Don't think that the PRCs intentions are not clearly understood here. It has our attention.
Ansar Allah only started targeting Israeli ships, then US-UK got involved for some stupid reason, now your shipping is being targeted.
I don’t think PRC shipping is affected?
So it’s the consequences of your own actions. Or did you not learn that lesson after 20yrs in Iraq Afghanistan? You could have done nothing and focused on the real threat but nah , couldn’t be that simple lol
I like what you say, but, the Jones Act serves a purpose. No American will work for the wages an impoverished Filipino will. I don't want to bring up the "s" word again, but some of these non-American mariners work under conditions any American would find intolerable.
They have great point. We really need to replace our inland tug and barge operators with Chinese citizens earning $20/day. I'm sure it will be great. To help with this transition we can also allow Chinese trucking firms to operate on the US highways with Chinese licenses getting paid the minimum wage of Cambodia.
The Cato Institute starts with a conclusion and works backwards. That being said, I’m not saying there are not problems with the Jones act. What I’m saying is there are issues that legislatures need to grapple with. How do we crew our ships with sailors who expect to make American wages, in a business that pays people starvation salary. It’s a conundrum we have been unable to solve.
This is because, per statistics, the US is doing great compared the the rest of the world. After all, Apple is a top American manufacturer. Cisco, an American tech icon, is doing great. Dell in Texas is doing great. You know what all of those companies have in common? They don't make anything in the US despite being top tier 'American manufacturers'.
You are correct, the USSR spent almost half its GNP on defense and spent themselves into collapse. Not a race they could have won against the US. The PRC cannot either, but they are not playing catch-up. We are now because they got in front of this with every dollar they could squeeze out of Walmart, Apple, etc., etc. We do not have the equivalent of Ronald Reagan to make the point.
Total tourist in these parts, honest question, please be gentle...
How does current shipyard capacity today compare to prior to the FDR's build up of the Navy? There is a balance to be struck between war- and peace-time industry, so how much yard capacity is actively used vs mothballed, and what would be re-tooled for wartime? Has the US completely lost the plot, or in the outbreak of a Pacific war would it be more retooling of commercial yards?
Not knowing the details, how much dedicated naval construction capacity is required? Similarly, knowing the way peace politics goes, wouldn't those 'reserve' facilities - for lack of a better word - be simply dead weight filled with counterproductive bureaucrats and seat fillers?
Trying to understand the balance between shipyard capacity during the long peace, vs US economic growth, and the political realities of what those facilities would be like if they weren't given real production targets.
Or, to rephrase, how much lower would/should we expect peacetime capacity to be compared to an all out war footing?
As above, total tourist here, forgive any gross overgeneralization or complete misunderstandings.
If you want to be more accurate in the understanding of how the interplay of public and private yards evolved in the 20th century, recommend you read this book by the gent who set it all in motion...
Yes, the story of how America turned to the Arsenal of Democracy is a fascinating one. I'm so old I was on a Navy ship with a gyro repeater which was built by "Dodge Brothers, Detroit Michigan."
But, that's not the point. When the Navy designed and build ships, they learned, as an institution, how to build and design warships. They had the folks who had been building Navy ships for twenty, thirty, and forty years as USN employees. We had welders, and shipfitters, boilermakers and foundry workers all working together to build government ships in government yards. They were not bullshitting paper-pushers, but a trained workforce capable of building combat vessels. When we privatized, we trashed 200 years of institutional knowledge.
Defense of a nation is not a profit-making enterprise. It just isn't.
I also want to note that the interplay between public and private yards is gone. All our eggs are in one basket. I basket I might add, which may not be owned by US citizens.
I remain convinced that if the folks at BuShips, or whatever mangled conglomeration of letters it now goes by, were folks who actually built ships, the LCS never would have seen the light of day. There’s simply no substitute for experience.
The opening hours and days after China starts the dance will be shocking. So shocking that USINDOPACOM and COM7FLT won’t have any contact with their lost vessels. What China will do in the opening hours will be a psychological blow as much as a military blow. Ships will be damaged and sunk with no assets available for rescue. Meanwhile all the US and allied military bases between the first island chain and Guam will be hit with massive attacks by the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Rocket Forces.
We will inflict damage but like a boxer, on his heels wondering where the blows are coming from and asking in his own hubris l, how can this be happening, we will holding on until the bell rings.
Picture the basic truth of US Navy and Marine and Air Force dependents, being in the path of these attacks and destruction while the rumors make it off the 7th Fleet watch floor (if it can survive) of the loss of Reagan and her strike group, the loss of Carl Vinson and half her strike group and the unknown damage on our enemy. Think of the families, with no word on their Sailor, no base to live in and now with no way to be returned to CONUS.
This is just one snap shot into the opening hours of our coming war with China. We should be evacuating our forward deployed families. We should make the tour a 2 year unaccompanied tour and rotate our mid grade officers into the pac theater so they can gain awareness. We need to send them TAD to the decision centers so they can see who the enemy is. We need to right fucking yesterday stop decommissioning our ships. We need to appoint a general board and get our ship repair facilities and contingency ship repairs on production. We must by order of magnitude begin to produce naval munitions.
Time is short. And getting shorter. I fear it may be too late.
Where will you get them? Young men are not going in because they don't want white kids, and the GOFOs are playing diversity games with national security.
That assumes that opening actions are restricted to close to China.
Guam would almost certainly be included, and likely Pearl Harbor, and possibly SDGO and Bremerton. But, I think an EMP over the heartland throwing us back to 1880 in a flash would be more effective and less destructive of soon to be acquired territories.
Yes to all. If you’re gonna hit us, make sure you kill us. I expect Guam, Pearl, all west conus bases to be struck at the opening salvo. Our ports on the west coast will be targeted as well. The EMP is a legit threat that is ignored or as the Normies will try to deflect as not rational because meh our nuclear response….
The war with China will be a decades long war as we struggle mightily to rebuild our shattered fleet. This could and likely will lead to a nuclear exchange. How limited? Who knows. But it’s time to start exploring the answers to those questions.
I've wondered about that. I think it really depends on the administration.
I can also see it being a day's long battle, one we lose in the first 24 hours and then somebody like the current admin cries out for peace and throws Taiwan under the bus and we withdraw.
It is also possible that we have already reached an unspoken, unconscious realpolitik accommodation with China, the "Hey, we can work with these guys" idea based on Milley's secret phone call and the Biden's Sino-grift. Ain't nuthin' persnal, it's jus' bidness.
China is vulnerable in different ways than the US.
China imports most of their fuel and a lot of their food. China is near the end of a long, vulnerable oil supply line from the Middle East. They are currently trying to figure out how to negotiate with the Taliban to pipe oil through Afghanistan and Pakistan.
If it becomes important enough they will just do it. And if it takes covering 5 miles to either side the pipeline with VX, well, they will do that too.
I see it as a 30 day war, not decades long. First day will be very ugly with lots of losses. The next 2 weeks will be bringing together what can be put together with what was left and what can be brought from the other areas. Week 4 will be another brawl and week 5 will be negotiations for a cease fire.
During this time the Chinese will grab what they can grab in addition to taking a foothold in Taiwan. Interesting question is how well the Chinese sub forces will be keeping reinforcements from traveling the Pacific. I am guessing the waters between Pearl Harbor and the West Coast & Panama Canal will be as contested as those west of Wake.
So the real need is to do something yesterday. To build escorts yesterday. To build destroyers and cruisers and P8s yesterday. Because I think the war will be over/entered a cease fire before the US even figures out how to fix what ships limp home.
It won’t be over in 30 days. Losing 20- 30 percent of our navy in the first few days and weeks will give pause in our flag ranks. We don’t have a Spruance or a Nimitz willing to risk it all. We will certainly cause serous damage to the PLAN and PLAF but we will exhaust our weapons and will be forced to retreat to a boundary to husband what we have left. Then and only then will our shipyard repair capacities be explored and add in half a year or likely 2 years to get that capacity up and running. We can and will produce warm bodies but having warships to sail in will be the problem. It will not be over in 30 days. It took us 6 weeks to build the capacity to bomb Al Qaeda and the Taliban. I see nothing that will change that. Our subs will defend and expend what they need to fall back into a defensive perimeter between Guam and Pearl while our “leadership” tries to figure out what to do and counter any stupidity out of our executive branch. Who do we have on our bench that has that influence? MSM will call for surrender after the shock hits. It takes decades to build a competent and complete carrier strike group. Decades.
Remember the cease fire will be called by the politicians, not the military. They will look for peace and compromise. And depending on how effective the Chinese military is there will be more or less push to "stop the madness"
"our “leadership” tries to figure out what to do and counter any stupidity out of our executive branch"
I'm certainly not confident that the stupidity that needs to be dealt with only, or even largely, will be from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. I think we've accumulated a lot of diversity hires and clueless bootlickers that hang out around the NMCC. This ignores the members/staff of the JCS who have developed a personal relationship with various members of the PLA.
The anti-nuke/anti-defense-spending crowd is increasing the odds of a nuclear war significantly because they can't see past their own upturned noses.
Imagine a first strike on a handful of locations that remove more that half our remaining carrier fleet that are either in port or drydock/under construction. Without repair facilties or construction capacity, how is that fight west of Wake going to go?
Also consider the Navy now has virtually no forward repair capability. Days of AD and AS class ships are long past.
500 vessels sunk sounds high, but I don't dispute it. It's a lot higher than I would have guessed. I know there were 52 subs lost. The article is behind a paywall - so I don't know if it gives a breakdown.
Wikipedia has a list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_losses_in_World_War_II
Looks like 174 surface combatants and submarines (they list 54, not 52 subs).
I suspect the balance of that 500 is auxiliary ships. But the point remains we can't replace that in 4 years at current capacity even if the auxiliary ships are excluded.
The 4 fleet and 7 light/escort carriers are beyond what we do now. 4 fleet carriers is over a decade of work and mapping the 7 light and escort carriers to modern amphib helicopter carriers is at least a decade.
Thanks. Another issue is combat damage. In WWII ships could take a beating and still fight - that not the case now. Hits from small arms can likely cause a "mission kill" these days.
Just look at the shipyards that have been BRAC'd. Few places for a 'mission kill' to limp home to. http://shipbuildinghistory.com/shipyards/public.htm
I'm afraid we're going to have to get hurt hard in order to do what's necessary. No real will to say, add another Virginia or Burke line, or even look at relatively cheap firepower additions (OSV or FRC with missile packs). Repair facilities.... just exist, right? The contractors can crank out unlimited ammunition, right? People have a belief that it's still 1991, no matter how much they deny it.
At the start of tthe war we had ramped up and about 1 in 8 ships was a patrol ship. By the end the ratio had fallen to 1 in 5 or 6.
I consider it a case of ramping up hull numbers now for (hopefully) deterrent effect. Get a couple squadrons of missile boats in the Philippines, a few more in Vietnam, more at various islands so we can have the big ships closer to the main battle area.
Our unused fleet in being are offshore OSVs and FSVs. We should have an emergency plan to enlist them. We need more gear that can be quickly attached to a hull of convenience.
Patrol ships? Do you mean combatants as opposed to cargo ships?
I would think we had more combatant vessels under construction at first, until we gained naval superiority over the Japanese. At that point we could shift more construction towards the merchant vessels transporting fuel, beans, bullets, and bandages. By then the Japanese weren't as much of a threat to our shipping, which allowed us to get busy moving more troops and materiel from island to island.
Victory in the Pacific required boots on the ground and shadows on the runways, and to get to that point we had to defang the IJN first.
I am talking patrol ships
Tacoma - 96
Some WWI Eagle Boats
SC497 - 438 (Some converted to gunboat)
SC461 - 343
Flower Class - 25 designated patrol
PT boats - 543
That's off the top of my head.
Oh. I see.
I'm all for building more hulls to patrol where needed and to hit back at whatever threats are there. I just hope the little guys have appropriate weaponry for 2024.
We survived WW2 in the Pacific because ship technology was so much simpler and because the nation began gearing up for it two years earlier by building armaments for the British. Boiler controls? That was Fireman Snuffy. Target tracking for all of the auxiliaries was the Mk 1 Eyeball. Our nation has become incredibly sidetracked by the new religion of anthropomorphic warming (yet 50 years ago the big scare headlines warned of a new ice age). And frankly, with so many people expecting things to be done for them by the government, I feel most of the nation has lost the will do to anything except lay back and whine in the face of adversity. I really wish I could be more positive, but my only hope is my children and grandchildren, who are running counterflow to the stream.
Many problems are not as bad when you do a deep dive into them. Things you think you knew aren't accurate, you learn things that mitigate your fears, etc.
As the CDR Sal lays out, (very accurately, in my opinion)...Naval war in the Pacific is not one of them. The more I learned about the short, mid and long term prospects for, and impacts of such a conflict, and what is required to mitigate those issues, the worse it appeared.
If you use a DIME / PMESII construct to describe the environment and the interactions of the players in such a framework, it gets bad very quickly. We're not ready for this, don't seem to understand the task, and are taking few if any actions to mitigate the known weaknesses. Which brings the use of "weapons of mass destruction" much closer to reality than ever before. Never forget, you go to war with what you have, not what's projected in the POM, in the pipeline, or on the latest .ppt brief for a "game changing C4ISR / targeting / kill chain shortening system". When you're losing, you'll reach for what you've got in you hand...that goes for both side in any conflict.
...and you go to war with the leaders, the people and the skills that they have. I can't give an accurate assessment, but it looks grim to me.
And you go to war with the values of the men in the arena
And pray for a quick learning curve in what values enhance survival and a win for us. I can think of a lot of baggage that should be shed right now.
Well we’re going to war with a CNO that I spent most of two years with in college (was our coxswain). She’s smart, but not by any measure within a 16” shot of a King or Nimitz. And I suspect fully woke-ified.
"west of Wake" tragically, I have come to believe that far too many will be/may be, unwilling to defend, ANYTHING,........west of Attu.
being unable to, is what we repeatedly see coming, from here
Will the Deciders take the plunge to defend Attu? Hmm... You are an optimist.
^ For the thousand acres of solar panels planned for there? The plunge will be epic and inspiring. I want Ltjg Kerry recalled to active duty with a sail board to command to defend Attu.
I'm not sure current leadership would defend anything west of Chesapeake Bay, exception for Los Angeles
Even at the height of the Cold War there was an assumption that a certain percentage of submarines would be lost in the first week of the war not to direct enemy action but to ship handling errors by the crew under combat conditions. I assume a similar, but lower due to the less extreme environment, number for surface ships. Certainly, damage control failures would cost ships there (as they did for Japan the entirety of WW2).
After a change of command I had a new CO tell us we were just the kind of boat in question. This didn't surprise me based on the prior CO's priorities: politics. He was promoted to a more prestigious command for that politicking and who cares if we didn't survive day one of a war after he left.
Yet, compared to the modern Navy that CO was a piker at putting politics ahead of readiness. It's no surprise as this was the mid-90s and 30 more years of peace have accrued. The Army and Marines have had some breaks in peace to let mud boots rise some. The Navy has had nothing (I suspect the Air Force hasn't either).
With fewer ships than we lost in WW2 we cannot afford the kind of week one loses we are facing from ship handling and damage control failures.
Fresh aboard DE-1027 in 1966, this RDSA was sent to USS Buttercup in Newport, RI with a cadre of similarly clueless sailors. One day of training with a "sink or swim" final exam. My memory is still "Wow", "OMG" and "...please, Jesus". Except for the daily inport fire drills I (we) never again did such intense damage control training in the next six ships in 19½ years of sea duty over my 26 year career. Was I ready in the Gulf of Tonkin? The Persian Gulf? I don't think so. How many USS Buttercups have we now? Are they running a night shift and on weekends? "Please, Jesus."
Those DC trainers are no fun, but hoooooooo boy do they focus the mind on stopping flooding early.
^ When the outside air temperature is 45-50°F, particularly so.
I still remember the feeling of an impending case of drowning when we had to exit a space up the ladder and thru the scutttle.
That is *EXACTLY* what was in my mind when I wrote that remark up there. Going up the ladder INTO a raging tube of cold water thundering down through a scuttle on top of my head was just about the most unnatural thing I ever forced myself to do.
The jibbering caveman in my brainstem was screaming "no no no" and he almost prevailed. The greater fear of disappointing my shipmates and embarrassing myself in front of them won out. Barely.
Yep. Fear of letting down others is one hell of a motivator. The submarine wet trainers have a flange that’s set to give the watchstander a good blast of water in the face as he’s making a report.
I was the single officer (Ensign with a whopping 3 months of active service) in my DC class. Pressure to do well personally as well as leading a DC team that without doubt had more experience than I do? Oh, yeah.
I rather enjoyed the fire fighting trainer at Sub Base Groton. If they came back for volunteers to head up I always did?
We had a chance to do what I assume was an easy run on Buttercup when I was in Sea Cadets. It was a lot of fun (summer). Engaged in more vigorous training at Treasure Island, Repair Party Leader school or whatever it was called, a few years later
It might be worth pointing out that "500 ships lost" doesn't include ships taken out of the fight for long periods of time due to damage sustained in action.
Indeed. Many of the ships damaged at, say Pearl Harbor, were repaired at Mare Island, now long-closed and most of the real estate transformed into a Lennar Housing development.
The US doesn't have the Yards, public or private that can be expanded to support new build, repairs, or refits of major combatants.
Outside of the National Security Cutter, the US doesn't have the established "viable" small combatant designs that can be readily produced. The Navy should be out licensing construction of FFG-62 to every yard that has the real estate.
What's left in reserve, the old CG-47's, need new Combat Systems, and even if upgraded, we don't have the missiles to fill their VLS.
In short, it's going to be a SOB to keep them West of the First Island Chain when they decide to come out and Play.
We have OPCs coming on line in 2 yards. I'd also say tha if FMM can't manage 2 FFG per year effectively, could they manage 1 FFG and 1 MMSC because I am starting to he the MMSC actually fixes more of the LCS problems than has been publicized. I'd also say that after EPF Flt II and the EMS ships, get that line working on a new aluminum surface combatant that addresses some of the shortcomings of the Indy design.
FMM has already announced that the USS Constellation will be at least one year late, and over budget. The "stated" problem is lack of labor, esp. welders. BS. The problem is that Navy has made many changes to the design of the FREMM and each change increases cost and pushes out delivery date since multiple Navy agencies have to review in detail what the change affect. What a Goat Rope. Name the Navy person requesting the change and reduce them by at least one rank, or be fired.
https://bit.ly/48DXUgu
Probably a civilian
If so then reduce him a rank or fire him. Though I understand it can be a challenge to fire civilians if they are part of the Civil Service. Remora's
Doesn't a Navy type have to approve of changes made by a civilian? (Unless they are ES?)
A Rubber Room assignment/re-location would at least keep the person from causing further harm.
If the First Island Chain is not doable, then shoot for the Third (French Frigate Shoals) or Fourth (The Farallons & Channel Islands). Let the Admirals call it the foundation for Defense in Depth.
When I wrote this morning in answer to Brettbaker, I was angry. Angry because of the political environment that has corrupted our national defense in general, and the Navy in particular simply because that is how I spent my military time. I will try to be more constructive, though I make no promises. My time in NAVSEA Preliminary Ship Design included doing something my superiors told me was impossible - adding a dual helo hangar to DDG-51. So, here we go. The Constellation class will not, on its own, fill the gap. The line is too slow and geographically challenged, in addition to the programmatic fubars you mentioned. The NSC has twice the displacement of the Fletcher class. I suggest that a considerable portion of the extra displacement in our current ship classes is due to carrying around as much habitability space as we do. I commissioned USS John Young (DD-973) and I was frankly embarrassed by the bowling alley hab spaces we enjoyed.
I didn't join the Navy for a pleasure cruise. I joined to to serve and fight as needed. Who among you has ever seen a recruiting ad for the Corps that featured the soft beds in the barracks?
Getting off my soap box and back to ship design. Every ton we intentionally add to a ship design is joined unintentionally by six others due to the iterative nature of designing ships. If we strip out the fripperies, and stop trying to add every new toy and weapon system possible to a given ship, we can get down to a displacement and operational speed profile that more closely matches the DDs or even the DEs of WW2. As an on-scene participant, I can tell you that the DDG-1000 design team had to juggle and shoehorn 23 new technologies into that hull. Why should anyone be surprised it ended up so large? We powered some of those WW2 DEs with diesel engines. Why does everything need a gas turbine these days? General Electric is still in the business of building diesel-electric plants for locomotives. Some of the same assembly lines might be useful as is; some may need to be converted to similar, but different, designs. I mention hab space and propulsion options, and I may not have hit on the right list of topics to examine, but I am convinced these and other issues need to be more closely examined by someone willing to throw rocks at all of the glass houses in DC. We will never make progress if we continue to go down the same road program after program.
Diesels work great on ships needing less total power than1 gas turbine. These days that pretty much means a corvette or small frigate.
Concur. I can see a lot of need for small frigates in our future. We’ve spent a lot of national treasure on the Burke class - well spent, but a billion here and a billion there and soon it adds up to real money. We need to think a bit harder than was done to birth to the LCS.
Consider the Italian PPAs make 25 knots jus on 2 10MW diesels. They could have increased range and payload if they'd just left the gas turbine out.
I hadn’t looked at the characteristics of that class until now. Thanks. There always seems to be a psychological need to hit 30+ kt that can’t always be matched by an operational need to climb the cubic power curve. Gas turbines are efficient only at the upper end of their power curve, so a CODAG plant carries around dead weight most of the time.
As an aside, and pardon if I’ve asked this question before, but you the same Andy I worked with on the DDG 1000 preliminary design?
Lol, nope. Sorry, but I am just shooting for top rated amateur.
"Don’t just look at the personnel numbers. 500 U.S. naval vessels sunk. I have news for you, we have no way in 2024 to replace even a fraction of those numbers in under four years. We will have to fight with what we have, and try to force victory in the face of attrition without relief."
Sir, where will we find the crews to man the replacements?
Ready Reserve and Fleet Reserve, I should think. Universal Draft as well.
Gonna need to rapidly and significantly increase the capacity of Navy & Coast Guard A and C schools for the key rates like MK, ME, ET, OS, etc.
For most Americans (especially politicians), oceans are mysteries. Crossing the Atlantic to Euroland is but a five-hour night flight, mostly asleep after meal service. The Western Pacific is also a similar and abstract travel concept; the burden of intercontinental movement deadened by inflight video entertainment. Meanwhile, even at home within the US itself, most destinations are a three or four-hour flight from here to there, unless one must connect in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, etc.
.
The point being... Our ability to move fast and far does not necessarily make us wiser; definitely not operationally or strategically wiser. In the olden days, there was something to be said for riding a train or sailing on a ship and watching the world pass by at close quarters. Much slower, yes. But the journey came with a far better appreciation for the actual geography beneath, aka the tyranny of distance.
McGuire to Rhein Main was a 9 hour flight on a DC-8 in 1969.
I know most people find logistics boring, but ... has anybody tallied up how many American shipyards can build/repair each class of combatant vessel, tanker, and cargo ship that we currently use?
If we're standing here with our pants around our ankles, as I suspect we are, then how many shipyards/drydocks do we need to add in order to build and sustain a victorious fleet? How are we doing on fuel dumps and refineries?
Would dumping the Jones Act goose our merchant shipping fleet? What other laws need to be repealed (yes, yes, Goldwater-Nichols goes without saying) or enacted to fix our self-inflicted mess?
How are we looking for steel, rare earth elements, and critical microchips?
Are we ever going to put serious guns on our ships again? I suspect the Marines would appreciate having something heftier than 5" on call for naval gunfire support.
Is there a modern Andrew Higgins or three out there who needs to be funded and turned loose?
What a freakin' mess. We used to be a seagoing nation.
As much as I hate the politics of Oregon/Washington and the Portland/Vancouver metro area...theres a ton of potential here. The Vancouver Kaiser yards are gone, but at least the area is still mostly industrial, and the waterfront isn't condos and apartments. But that's slowly changing. On part of that same land, Vigor is building new landing craft for the Army. So if there was an urgency, a second round of shipbuilding and/or repair is possible in Vancouver.
In Portland, the Swan Island yards can handle rather large ships, in fact I believe one of the hospital ships was or is there getting some work done. There's a couple drydocks there capable of handling DDGs. I dont think theres room for a lot of expansion, but theres certainly a useful amount of repair capacity there, certainly enough to help take the strain off of SD and Bremerton if utilized properly.
I know there are decent shipyards in the Great Lakes, but they can't build anything for the Navy that's too big to squeeze out of the St Lawrence Seaway. They do build plenty of Coast Guard cutters.
The SLS maximums are:
Length: 225.5 m (740 ft.)
Beam: 23.77 m (78 ft.)
Draft: 8.08 m (26 ft., 6 in.)
Height above waterline: 35.5 m (116.5 ft.)
If the freshwater yards up here can be put to work building the smaller vessels, I wonder if our remaining coastal yards can crank out enough capital ships and repair the damaged ones?
I wonder what yards we've got on the Mississippi River?
Im still on my first coffee so too lazy to look it up right now...but those dimensions sound like theyd accommodate a Burke- with the height/draft being the assumed potential issues. How hard would it be to fix those issues if truly needed?? How many miles of seaway would need dredged?? How many bridges need replaced?? Just wondering. And...how practical would a big builder be up there considering the weather/waterway icing?? Is it a serious problem for building/scheduling?? We dont get that cold here in the PNW thank God!!
Draft for the bow sonar is the problem. That and ice with a bow sonar.
Ice in the Great Lakes that's up to 3 feet thick can be dealt with by the assorted USCG icebreaking tugs (140' Bay class), and ice up to 10 feet thick can be broken by the MACKINAW.
I wondered if that was a factor in deleting the bow sonar from the Connies- the inability to gift the contract to someone who had a geographical inability to actually build the ship...
Swing state: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/06/27/this-is-donald-trumps-beautiful-missile-frigate/?sh=ae751f416332
I think the Burkes draw over 30', so they're over the draft limit by a yard or more. No idea how tall they are.
Their length and beam are within SLS limits, though.
Ok... yeah that's likely an insurmountable problem. I looked at nav charts here around Portland/Vancouver. I know DDGs can get to Portland because they come to the Vigor Swan Island yard and downtown for fleet week. The channel adjacent to the old Vancouver Kaiser location is close. The location could become a build/repair yard again with just deepening the shoreline to allow it. Considering that WestPac is the likely next conflict, more west coast capacity would be really nice. The caveat being if damaged ships were sent to Vancouver vs Portland, and had additional draft, the channel might need rework to accommodate it. Nice to daydream, anyway.
Now that we're daydreaming, I wonder how much shipyard repair potential our friends in Australia could provide a damaged USN combatant?
LSM would be a great one for the great lakes or inland waterways.
Nothing. We let Huntington Ingalls buy Avondale and scrap the whole place. Unconscionable.
"Are we ever going to put serious guns on our ships again?"
This.... Im an unabashed fan of digging the old MCLWG and its blueprints outta museum duty and getting it into production. An 8in gun really is in the sweet spot of balance between mount weight/bulk and shell weight. In my daydreams, I see a return to twin mounts, and significantly deeper magazines than the 1970s prototype.
I think a WestPac conflict is going to see a lot of empty VLS, and a lot of ships stumbling around in EMCON, and bumbling into the enemy like the Guadalcanal days. And marking the W or L column will come down to a gun duel. I really think we need to be better prepared for that. Building the Spruances to accept the 8in gun was a bright move, but weve lost our way since then...
Ships with lots of guns would be very useful in the Gulf of Aden right now. How many shells could you fire for the cost of one Tomahawk?
In another convo, another time, it was guesstimated that 8in rounds would land between 1 and $2k each. Not free but certainly absurdly cheap compared to anything else!!
For the price of one or two Tomahawks we could turn Aden into one large dumpster fire.
All that takes is a few well placed matches
Just FYI, one NATO-standard 155mm artillery round currently rings the cash register at about $8,000, give or take change.
$697.43 for a M795 per page 358 of https://www.asafm.army.mil/Portals/72/Documents/BudgetMaterial/2023/Base%20Budget/Procurement/AMMO_ARMY.pdf
That doesn't include the fuze or propellant charge.
Wow...big difference. Any idea what a complete round might cost with this number?
The 2014 cost from https://apps.dtic.mil/procurement/Y2014/Army/stamped/P40_E27501_BSA-37_BA-1_APP-2034A_PB_2014.pdf
Shows Propellant is $120 and $604 for the fancy new multi-function fuze or $93 for a basic PD fuze. It's $13,303.55 if you want to put a guidance kit on the round.
So, all up, $900 per 155mm with fuze PD, $1,400 for a VT/PD/Delay/time fuze, or about $14K for a 155mm guided round. That 14K isn't nearly as bad as I expected.
The Atlanta class crusier. The first four units were equipped 16, 5"-38 caliber guns. Maybe a modernized version of this concept would be helpful. The rambling thoughts of an old hermit.
With infinite chances those guns won't hi a target 900nm away. The real question is what can a gun really do to a supersonic cruise missile, a hypersonic cruise missile, and a drone swarm.
They can wipe out every rathole along the coast west of Aden.
Congrats, hope they find a missile somewhere in those rat holes, but I'm not counting on it.
We also need to make use of the Marines. Every island of the coast of Yemen should be occupied. Every coastal vilage west of Aden should be razed. The Marines could then move inward from the coast. We have 100,000+ Marines. Surely, they are all not guarding embassies.
I appreciate the sentiment...but Im not really a fan of putting men ashore anywhere in that region. Id rather wreak havoc by air...bring in the -52s and level everything. The Houthis need to be eliminated as a threat to shipping. BUT I think until we deal with Iran, these Middle East brushfires will keeping popping up until we do. THATS what we need to be looking at and planning now. Otherwise, Insure Prosperity or whatever its called, will be a multi-year debacle, and our Israeli friends will see Hamas rise again...
Neither am I, but there is a limit to what can be accomplished from the air and sea. In the end only the Marines can clear out the ratholes, basements, and caves.
Maybe.... Of course, we need to conduct ops like we're doing it to win. Which means WWII style. No wimpy ROEs or an anal retentive level of collateral damage avoidance.
Kill...destroy...and come home. And frankly Id suggest the same kinda treatment for Iran. Decapitate the govt, eliminate all military capability, as well as military manufacturing. (And oh yeah...all those nuclear processing sites!!) Then come home. No troops needed
Agreed. No more pauses in the air campaign in the hope that the other side will see these as gestures of goodwill and come to the negotiating table. Reduce the enemy to rubble until he crawls and asks for terms.
Islands maybe, the mainland, big, dry and they don't like us much. Nothing is gained by occupying a place. Just work to exert full influence. If anyone can wake up dead in he middle of the night they will start changing their routine.
I can't believe you read this blog and think the best course of action is to get back into the middle east lol.
I thought China/Taiwan/Pacific was supposed to be the focus of US military.
Get back into? We have been there far too long for most of our liking. Shackled to a corpse that we find difficult to divest from. That's the reality. What we are discussing are threats to the sea lane and today's ultimate source of ME instability, Iran. Don't think that the PRCs intentions are not clearly understood here. It has our attention.
Ansar Allah only started targeting Israeli ships, then US-UK got involved for some stupid reason, now your shipping is being targeted.
I don’t think PRC shipping is affected?
So it’s the consequences of your own actions. Or did you not learn that lesson after 20yrs in Iraq Afghanistan? You could have done nothing and focused on the real threat but nah , couldn’t be that simple lol
Wrong. 2016 the sand people targeted the USS Nitze. They lost. Learn your history.
Too little and too long. Improve what the 127s are firing and then work like hell to integrate ER-GMLRS.
I like what you say, but, the Jones Act serves a purpose. No American will work for the wages an impoverished Filipino will. I don't want to bring up the "s" word again, but some of these non-American mariners work under conditions any American would find intolerable.
Most third world workers already work under conditions any American would find intolerable. So it has been, so it will be. What is your point?
These guys explain the perverse effects of the Jones Act far better than I can:
https://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/jones-act-burden-america-can-no-longer-bear
They have great point. We really need to replace our inland tug and barge operators with Chinese citizens earning $20/day. I'm sure it will be great. To help with this transition we can also allow Chinese trucking firms to operate on the US highways with Chinese licenses getting paid the minimum wage of Cambodia.
Did you read the post?
The Cato Institute starts with a conclusion and works backwards. That being said, I’m not saying there are not problems with the Jones act. What I’m saying is there are issues that legislatures need to grapple with. How do we crew our ships with sailors who expect to make American wages, in a business that pays people starvation salary. It’s a conundrum we have been unable to solve.
Did you read the post?
That conclusion seems to be "how do we sell out the US to china faster?"
https://www.cato.org/commentary/busting-deindustrialization-myth
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-daily-podcast/american-deindustrialization-dangerous-myth
This is because, per statistics, the US is doing great compared the the rest of the world. After all, Apple is a top American manufacturer. Cisco, an American tech icon, is doing great. Dell in Texas is doing great. You know what all of those companies have in common? They don't make anything in the US despite being top tier 'American manufacturers'.
The Operative phrase is -"used to be". We also used to hold people accountable for their actions.
A graphic comparing the dimensions of Panamax, Suezmax, Seawaymax, etc. is here:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Ship_measurements_comparison.svg/2560px-Ship_measurements_comparison.svg.png
Apply due caution, since it's Wikipedia.
Does the US gov have the budget to do this? You guys get much less bang for buck on your mil spending vs China/PLA.
Have you considered an arms race (mil buildup) is what PRC wants?
Didn't the USSR spend too much on its military, and was one of the causes of its demise?
You are correct, the USSR spent almost half its GNP on defense and spent themselves into collapse. Not a race they could have won against the US. The PRC cannot either, but they are not playing catch-up. We are now because they got in front of this with every dollar they could squeeze out of Walmart, Apple, etc., etc. We do not have the equivalent of Ronald Reagan to make the point.
Yes sorry that was my point too. PRC spends much less percent gdp on defence than US does, so China is much better positioned to fund an arms race.
US either has to get more efficient to match PLA, or actually prioritise PRC/TW/scs.
Yes China did very well in the free trade system the US setup, ironic isn’t it.
Now it’s US going back to protecting local industry with IRA etc. the end of globalisation haha from the biggest proponents of it
We used to be a serious nation.
Total tourist in these parts, honest question, please be gentle...
How does current shipyard capacity today compare to prior to the FDR's build up of the Navy? There is a balance to be struck between war- and peace-time industry, so how much yard capacity is actively used vs mothballed, and what would be re-tooled for wartime? Has the US completely lost the plot, or in the outbreak of a Pacific war would it be more retooling of commercial yards?
Not knowing the details, how much dedicated naval construction capacity is required? Similarly, knowing the way peace politics goes, wouldn't those 'reserve' facilities - for lack of a better word - be simply dead weight filled with counterproductive bureaucrats and seat fillers?
Trying to understand the balance between shipyard capacity during the long peace, vs US economic growth, and the political realities of what those facilities would be like if they weren't given real production targets.
Or, to rephrase, how much lower would/should we expect peacetime capacity to be compared to an all out war footing?
As above, total tourist here, forgive any gross overgeneralization or complete misunderstandings.
It would take somone at the NHHC to answer that question.
It's not just capacity but management. Something is dreadfully wrong with the way we are managing our yards.
FDR turned to Henry Kaiser to build shipyards and he did so. Kaiser turned to Henry Ford to figure out how to mass produce ships.
There are ships still on active duty which were build by US Navy workers in US Naval shipyards. We don't do that anymore.
We divested ourselves of the ability to build government ships in government yards and now buy ships from multi-national corporations.
Tom, the vast majority of WWII ships were built in -Private- yards.
Good example here with the Essex's:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex-class_aircraft_carrier
If you want to be more accurate in the understanding of how the interplay of public and private yards evolved in the 20th century, recommend you read this book by the gent who set it all in motion...
The New American Navy, Vol. 1 & 2
John D. Long
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_American_Navy.html?id=P00QzQEACAAJ
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_American_Navy.html?id=O_Ece197rroC
Lots of print copies of both volumes out and about too...
https://www.amazon.com/New-American-Navy-Vol-Illustrated/dp/1331372364
https://www.amazon.com/American-Navy-Vol-Classic-Reprint/dp/1331372542
Yes, the story of how America turned to the Arsenal of Democracy is a fascinating one. I'm so old I was on a Navy ship with a gyro repeater which was built by "Dodge Brothers, Detroit Michigan."
But, that's not the point. When the Navy designed and build ships, they learned, as an institution, how to build and design warships. They had the folks who had been building Navy ships for twenty, thirty, and forty years as USN employees. We had welders, and shipfitters, boilermakers and foundry workers all working together to build government ships in government yards. They were not bullshitting paper-pushers, but a trained workforce capable of building combat vessels. When we privatized, we trashed 200 years of institutional knowledge.
Defense of a nation is not a profit-making enterprise. It just isn't.
I also want to note that the interplay between public and private yards is gone. All our eggs are in one basket. I basket I might add, which may not be owned by US citizens.
We disagree often, but I agree we should have both private and government yards, as I think both expertise continuity and flexibility can be enhanced.
I remain convinced that if the folks at BuShips, or whatever mangled conglomeration of letters it now goes by, were folks who actually built ships, the LCS never would have seen the light of day. There’s simply no substitute for experience.
You can find the whole article on the Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org/web/20040131112028/http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99mar/victory.htm
Perhaps we need to change our strategy and what we think we can do to "save" the world? I found " The end of the world is just the beginning" interesting (https://www.amazon.com/End-World-Just-Beginning-Globalization/dp/B09CS8FRRD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=XXTLASDBUL3J&keywords=the+end+of+the+world+is+just+the+beginning&qid=1705595565&sprefix=the+end+of+the+world%2Caps%2C92&sr=8-1)
The opening hours and days after China starts the dance will be shocking. So shocking that USINDOPACOM and COM7FLT won’t have any contact with their lost vessels. What China will do in the opening hours will be a psychological blow as much as a military blow. Ships will be damaged and sunk with no assets available for rescue. Meanwhile all the US and allied military bases between the first island chain and Guam will be hit with massive attacks by the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Rocket Forces.
We will inflict damage but like a boxer, on his heels wondering where the blows are coming from and asking in his own hubris l, how can this be happening, we will holding on until the bell rings.
Picture the basic truth of US Navy and Marine and Air Force dependents, being in the path of these attacks and destruction while the rumors make it off the 7th Fleet watch floor (if it can survive) of the loss of Reagan and her strike group, the loss of Carl Vinson and half her strike group and the unknown damage on our enemy. Think of the families, with no word on their Sailor, no base to live in and now with no way to be returned to CONUS.
This is just one snap shot into the opening hours of our coming war with China. We should be evacuating our forward deployed families. We should make the tour a 2 year unaccompanied tour and rotate our mid grade officers into the pac theater so they can gain awareness. We need to send them TAD to the decision centers so they can see who the enemy is. We need to right fucking yesterday stop decommissioning our ships. We need to appoint a general board and get our ship repair facilities and contingency ship repairs on production. We must by order of magnitude begin to produce naval munitions.
Time is short. And getting shorter. I fear it may be too late.
Normalcy Bias is a wicked mistress.
Sadly its way too late.
The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago. The second best time is now.
I heartily agree with you, and would add that we need several frillion more Seabees, hospital corpsmen, and hardhat salvage divers.
Where will you get them? Young men are not going in because they don't want white kids, and the GOFOs are playing diversity games with national security.
That's certainly one of the main obstacles. I don't foresee anything changing soon with the brass' diversity-equity-inclusion silliness.
That assumes that opening actions are restricted to close to China.
Guam would almost certainly be included, and likely Pearl Harbor, and possibly SDGO and Bremerton. But, I think an EMP over the heartland throwing us back to 1880 in a flash would be more effective and less destructive of soon to be acquired territories.
Yes to all. If you’re gonna hit us, make sure you kill us. I expect Guam, Pearl, all west conus bases to be struck at the opening salvo. Our ports on the west coast will be targeted as well. The EMP is a legit threat that is ignored or as the Normies will try to deflect as not rational because meh our nuclear response….
Yes you get it John.
The war with China will be a decades long war as we struggle mightily to rebuild our shattered fleet. This could and likely will lead to a nuclear exchange. How limited? Who knows. But it’s time to start exploring the answers to those questions.
I've wondered about that. I think it really depends on the administration.
I can also see it being a day's long battle, one we lose in the first 24 hours and then somebody like the current admin cries out for peace and throws Taiwan under the bus and we withdraw.
Possible.
It is also possible that we have already reached an unspoken, unconscious realpolitik accommodation with China, the "Hey, we can work with these guys" idea based on Milley's secret phone call and the Biden's Sino-grift. Ain't nuthin' persnal, it's jus' bidness.
Perhaps. Until they start shooting.
China is vulnerable in different ways than the US.
China imports most of their fuel and a lot of their food. China is near the end of a long, vulnerable oil supply line from the Middle East. They are currently trying to figure out how to negotiate with the Taliban to pipe oil through Afghanistan and Pakistan.
That is important in a war of attrition. Big China has been stockpiling and her lines of communication (supply) are closer together than ours will be.
And stockpiling food.
And converting considerable acreage from decorative to agricultural use.
If it becomes important enough they will just do it. And if it takes covering 5 miles to either side the pipeline with VX, well, they will do that too.
I see it as a 30 day war, not decades long. First day will be very ugly with lots of losses. The next 2 weeks will be bringing together what can be put together with what was left and what can be brought from the other areas. Week 4 will be another brawl and week 5 will be negotiations for a cease fire.
During this time the Chinese will grab what they can grab in addition to taking a foothold in Taiwan. Interesting question is how well the Chinese sub forces will be keeping reinforcements from traveling the Pacific. I am guessing the waters between Pearl Harbor and the West Coast & Panama Canal will be as contested as those west of Wake.
So the real need is to do something yesterday. To build escorts yesterday. To build destroyers and cruisers and P8s yesterday. Because I think the war will be over/entered a cease fire before the US even figures out how to fix what ships limp home.
Tough to win a 30 day war when China has been playing he 30 year war for 30 or more years already. We need to make time our asset again.
It won’t be over in 30 days. Losing 20- 30 percent of our navy in the first few days and weeks will give pause in our flag ranks. We don’t have a Spruance or a Nimitz willing to risk it all. We will certainly cause serous damage to the PLAN and PLAF but we will exhaust our weapons and will be forced to retreat to a boundary to husband what we have left. Then and only then will our shipyard repair capacities be explored and add in half a year or likely 2 years to get that capacity up and running. We can and will produce warm bodies but having warships to sail in will be the problem. It will not be over in 30 days. It took us 6 weeks to build the capacity to bomb Al Qaeda and the Taliban. I see nothing that will change that. Our subs will defend and expend what they need to fall back into a defensive perimeter between Guam and Pearl while our “leadership” tries to figure out what to do and counter any stupidity out of our executive branch. Who do we have on our bench that has that influence? MSM will call for surrender after the shock hits. It takes decades to build a competent and complete carrier strike group. Decades.
Remember the cease fire will be called by the politicians, not the military. They will look for peace and compromise. And depending on how effective the Chinese military is there will be more or less push to "stop the madness"
Oh no doubt.
"our “leadership” tries to figure out what to do and counter any stupidity out of our executive branch"
I'm certainly not confident that the stupidity that needs to be dealt with only, or even largely, will be from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. I think we've accumulated a lot of diversity hires and clueless bootlickers that hang out around the NMCC. This ignores the members/staff of the JCS who have developed a personal relationship with various members of the PLA.
Fair.